Briefing Notes and Special Reports

Aside from working papers and seminars the RLP produces a range of publications for multiple purposes. The research is targeted at a range of audiences (eg academia, government officials or the public) and aims to produce information quickly on time-sensitive issues. These result in special reports compiled either through individual consultancies or for external publications, including briefing notes that represent immediate but preliminary observations from the field, letters sent to the national newspapers or advocacy briefs that attempt to bring attention to specific thematic areas.

An excerpt from Men of Hope’s Second Anniversary; a refugee led support group of male survivors of sexual violence in Kampala
On 30th January 2014, Men of Hope commemorated its second anniversary at Grand Global Hotel in Kampala. 140 participants attended the event; of whom 70 were male survivors of sexual violence. Other invited guests that attended the anniversary were representatives from the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), and partner Civil Society Organizations. 16 leaders from other support groups from Kampala, Isingiro and Gulu district also took part.Download this Report

Submitted By Refugee Law Project 23 February 2014. We are pleased to share with you our Commentary on the International Criminal Court Draft (ICC) Policy on Sexual and Gender Based Crimes, which we submitted to the Office of the Prosecutor on 23 February 2014, in response to a public call for comments.This commentary was prepared by the RLP in collaboration with the International Human Rights Law Clinic, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.Download this commentary

ACCS Project's Rapid Assesment Report. From the time the current violent conflict started in South Sudan, the Districts bordering South Sudan within Northern Uganda have been receiving refugees fleeing from the conflict in large numbers. The immediate concerns have been security implications for post-conflict northern Uganda and attendant humanitarian crisis. This report assessed the situation on the ground inside the Ugandan border and highlights the issues, figures, patterns and perceptions of refugees, asylum seekers, and key stakeholders. The report also looked at the immediate social-economic and political impact of the crisis within the refugee host districts including the relationships between the asylum seekers/refugees and local communities. The report was prepared for early warning purposes and presented sub-regional leaders (LCVs, RDCs, DPCs, CAOs, DISOs, and UPDF representatives) from Acholi and West Nile sub-regions in Gulu on 20th January 2014.Download this Report

This presentation titled “Identifying sexual violence and access to HIV service among male refugees in Uganda” was delivered in Bangkok in October 2013 during SVRI conference, and was jointly developed with our partners from Johns Hopkins University of Public Health.

In January 2013, the Center for Public Health and Human Rights, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Refugee Law Project, School of Law, Makerere Universtiy started a collaborative research project on “Assessment Screening to Identify Survivors Toolkit for Gender Based Violence (ASIST-GBV) for Men and Boys in Uganda” funded by the United States Bureau of Population Refugees and Migration funded this project. It builds on JHU’s previous research and success in developing the ASIST-GBV to screen and identify female refugee and IDP survivors of GBV in Ethiopia and Colombia, as well as on Refugee Law Project’s extensive experience working in Uganda with male refugee and IDP survivors of sexual violence.

The aim of the project was to develop a screening tool for systematic identification of refugees and IDP men and boy survivors of sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict settings. Prior to this project, no such screening tool has ever been developed, and it is seemed highly probable that only a small proportion of male survivors of GBV ever report their experience and/or access appropriate services.

Six years after the guns fell silent, and months into the second iteration of the Peace, Recovery and Development Programme (PRDP), the question of whether northern Uganda is truly at peace remains unanswered in many people’s minds.
An examination of regional and sub-regional conflict drivers by the three members of the Advisory Consortium on Conflict Sensitivity (ACCS) - International Alert, Refugee Law Project, Saferworld - over 2010-2012 aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of conflict drivers that have the potential to undermine development and peacebuilding efforts underway in PRDP II. It focuses on people’s perceptions of whether the PRDPs and associated interventions are increasing the likelihood of long-term peace and stability in the region.
This conflict analysis reveals that many communities in northern Uganda appear to be in a state of latent conflict, with increasingly frequent manifestations of overt conflict including clashes between communities and government officials, violent community disputes over resources, and sexual and gender-based violence. The inadequately addressed legacies of the war with the Lord’s Resistance Army, fuelled by new and long-standing grievances, are keeping communities in a state of unease where trigger events can lead to a rapid escalation of violence. Conflict drivers identified in this analysis (such as land grabbing, corruption, and competition over natural resources) are creating a context that many respondents believe will lead to a return to overt conflict, whether in the form of increasing social unrest or more organised violence.
Download the full report

Do you know about the National Memory & Peace Documentation Centre?

A collaborative initiative of the RLP and the Kitgum District Local Government. The NMPDC is located in Kitgum district town council - Northern Uganda an area ravaged by over two decades of armed conflict and is struggling to recover in the post-conflict era...